“He left me his bag,” he said. She looked around and saw Maryk’s black bag there on the counter, watching them, like a cat. “He only visits when I am asleep. It is fear, though he would never admit it. Fear of my sickness. Fear of what I am becoming. Do you know why he left me his wares?”
“I think so,” she said quietly.
“The poison in his needles. The great virus hunter cannot bring himself to kill me.” He faded and came around again. “What did you think when you sat with him in the airport? Did you hold his hand? Did you wish, just for a moment, that he was me dying here, and me him, and healthy?”
He looked so evil suddenly. His cruel words brought tears even though she knew they were not truly spoken by him. “Why are you so obsessed with Maryk?” she said.
He was silent a while, and still; oozing. The redness of his eyes made the tears dammed along the rims appear like blood, and for a moment, just for a moment, he looked like a despairing saint. He looked like Stephen Pearse again. “I thought you would have guessed by now,” he said, with deathly pride in his voice. “I am Peter Maryk’s conscience. I am that black heart he keeps locked away.”
The Fire
The work cubicles of the C complex lab in the Genetic Engineering section of Building Four were constructed of floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass. Geist sat on a wheeled stool inside the immaculate bell of the center work station while Maryk paced in front of him. A row of pencils stood like sentinels in the front pocket of Geist’s lab coat. The photograph on his laminated ID tag had been taken before the laboratory accident that caused his radiation exposure. In it Geist still possessed a mop of straw-colored hair.
Maryk gave him the condensed version of Zero’s creation and evolution and watched the man’s already pale face blanch to distress. What sold Geist on the story were the gaps it filled in the news accounts of the World Congress Center and Hartsfield airport outbreaks. Geist contemplated the structural discrepancies in the Zero virus comparisons Maryk had put up on the station monitors.
“Absurdly active,” said Geist. “Fracturing itself and refracturing, almost like a zipper.”
“It originated from a radiation exposure in a central African cave.”
Geist took another took at the before-and-after scans. “It could conceivably be reinfecting its human host with each genetic shift.”
“Not a host,” Maryk said. “The virus battled the original host’s body to equilibrium. Plainville has infiltrated and converted every one of this man’s cells. Host and virus are one and the same.”
“But the virus has shifted too much for the human half. It must now be consuming its own body.”
“Would you say the virus is mutating out of control?”
“The deviations are dynamic, arrant — like a human going from two arms to one, or three. Mutations are a terrific shock to the system.”
“And enough of them...”
Geist nodded. “This virus is going to mutate itself right out of business. When too much damage has been done to the gene core, it will no longer be able to reproduce.”
“And without the ability to reproduce, a virus is no longer a virus.”
“Dead matter, incapable of infection. But this takes time.
“Yes,” Maryk agreed pointedly. “Time.”
Geist sat back and crossed his arms as slowly as any man Maryk had ever seen. “Why come to me now?” he said. “A man colonized by an iatrogenic mutation of an immunopathic retrovirus. A humanized virus vector poised to infect the world.”
“An artist was once asked, ‘If your studio was burning to the ground, and you could only save one thing, what would it be?’ ”
Geist shook his head impatiently.
“The true artist brings out the fire. I want to bring out the fire here, Geist. I want to isolate this flame by depriving it of oxygen, so I can stamp it out.”
The old distrust had returned. “With what?”
“Time. I need you to brew something for me, and I need it fast.”
Geist crooked his head for a different angle on Maryk. Then he grinned. “A bug,” he said. “You want to counterinfect. You want a bug you can deliver to Zero.”
“No,” Maryk said. “To Atlanta. I want to infect the city before Zero does.”
Geist’s informed grin fell.
Maryk said, “A virus needs hosts. It travels only on the backs of others, through contact and exchange. Tonight is New Year’s Eve — the single biggest night of casual human interaction. We’ve got to break up the party. We’ve got to eliminate Zero’s transmission by keeping people apart.”
Geist said, “You want to give Atlanta a city wide flu?”
“Zero is peaking. He is dying and his virus is failing — in time. He’s gone underground now because he is sick. He is resting somewhere in order to build up his strength for a night of widespread infection. He is ready to touch off a pandemic that will engulf the human race. I need to starve him out so I can find him and eliminate him. I need to shut down the city and its inhabitants for a day or two.”
“So go out over the airwaves. Get Bobby Chiles on the news—”
“Not enough. Even with the public fear of the virus, you know there are some who would still ignore our warnings, and that’s all Zero needs. I need something that will hit the city fast and knock it down hard.”
Geist’s hand went slowly to rub his bald head. “Insane,” he said.
“Drastic. And desperate. And necessary.”
“I’m here to prevent disease.”
Maryk nodded. “Exactly.”
Geist massaged his scalp like a man polishing a brass orb. “I suppose you’d want ninety-eight to one hundred percent infectivity. Say, deliverable in a minute dose, and able to tolerate diverse environments. With no available antidote.”
“That’s right.”
“So would every army of every nation in the world. They call them ‘biological weapons,’ and I’d sooner trust something like this to them than to you.”
“This is what you do here, Geist: You bend nature into your bow. This planet is seething with ignorant hosts, and if we don’t stop Zero here in Atlanta, today, it’s over. It’s all over.”
Geist burned as he rubbed his head. He ruminated and polished and sighed. “There might be something.” Seconds ticked away while Geist studied Maryk warily. “Two years ago. A bug that burned through half the North Korean Army.”
Maryk recalled the news stories. “Came up out of the jungle and went right down again. Half the border went unmanned for two or three days.”
“Incontinence, some variable nausea. But generally, extreme fatigue. Shuts the body down into a deep sleep. Headaches, discomfort, but no real pain and no lingering effects. Nasty but clean. Dedicated. Airborne.”
Maryk said, “It has to be rock solid.”
“It’s a reliable DNA virus. Steady as a halfback, though I’d want another good look to be certain.”
“Fast?”
“Extraordinarily virulent. It gets anything with lungs, yet it burns clean, and exposure confers immunity. Once you get it, you can never get it again.”
“How much do we have?”
“Mere samples. But I could trick it up and replicate it easily enough.”
“And test it against Plainville. Make certain there’s no virus-beneficial cross-reaction. Zero’s mutating fast, and open to change, and I don’t want him to encounter something that would only add to his arsenal.”
“But how will you stop it from spreading beyond Atlanta?”
“Leave that to me. My only concern now is speed.”
“I’d have to pull this thing out of deep freeze in Thirteen. Look it over, shore it up. Engineer copies. But I haven’t said yes yet.”
“I’ll give you one hour.”
Geist shook his head. “You’re talking about the wholesale infection of a U.S. city. There are certain philosophical concerns. I like to be able to sleep at night.”
But Geist clearly was intrigued. Maryk saw in Geist’s face the seditious eyes of a true man of science.
“Just how do you plan on infecting all of metro Atlanta today?” Geist said.
Maryk strode to the glass door. “Leave that to me.”